The point of social bookmarking is to increase visibility for your content and drive traffic back to you. So, you do have to be careful how you are rated, who comments on your bookmarks, and that you have a popular appeal. If you just create content you think you will like, and never check the demographics of the social bookmarking site you are using, the odds are it won’t rank very high and it will be wasted effort. So, you want to not only social bookmark content, but also create content that is of interest to that particular group.

The steps to increase visibility are as follows:

1. Create your website with content that has a large appeal,

2. Register with Digg.com, StumbleUpon, and Delicious.com,

3. Bookmark and index all web pages and content you want to submit,

4. Submit to multiple social bookmarking sites to get the widest exposure,

5. Add bookmark buttons to your blogs and other content you want to have people rate,

6. Get people to comment on your bookmarks,

7. Get people to rate your bookmarks,

8. Share your bookmarks on other social networking sites by posting the links or through news feeds to your circle of friends,

9. Rate and discuss other friend’s bookmarks,

10. Automate the process, if possible.

One of the ways to automate bookmarking is by using a third party tool like Socialmarker.com. You do have to be careful when signing up for products that allow you to automate the process because you don’t want to be labeled a spammer. Avoid using any software or third party that promises to bookmark your content on more than 40 sites with one click. You aren’t really interested in spamming the web as much as generating bookmarks that attract attention, ratings, and discussions.

You can bookmark anyone’s content, it doesn’t have to be your own. The idea is to build a portfolio of interesting content and have people check out your profiles that lead them back to your sites. Of course, you will also be submitting your own sites, but if that’s all you do it may look obviously self-promoting.

If you don’t have interesting content of your own to post, avoid claiming someone else’s content as your own. That’s known as plagiarism and it can get you banned on a lot of social networking sites. So, always give credit where credit is due and some of that prestige will ultimately rub off on you.

By the way, do you want to learn more about using articles like this to drive traffic to your website and increase online conversions?